1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention concerns both a process for marking animals, and a device for carrying out the process. It is becoming increasingly important to be able to mark slaughter stock in a way that ensures an animal's life can be traced from birth or acquisition right through to deboning in the slaughterhouse. With the disappearance of the personal relationship between meat producers and meat consumers and the impossibility, or extreme difficulty, of tracing meat on its way from the producer to the consumer, there is a rapidly growing interest among consumer groups in being able to identify with precision where a particular meat comes from, and hence to be able to draw conclusions about feeding and geographic origin as well. Neither would meat consumers be the only ones to benefit from such a means of marking. Producers would also like to have a means of marking that would ensure a professional quality control of their animals' breeding and feeding history, and generally allow them to monitor their livestock as comprehensively and individually as possible. Hence there is great interest in being able to reliably and precisely monitor the complete life history of each individual animal. The relevant data for each individual animal can then be processed systematically, providing a means of furnishing proofs, and of drawing conclusions. It would allow e.g. vaccinations, feeds, weight and size measurements etc., drugs administered, other treatments, pedigree and all kinds of other data to be systematically recorded and reliably attributed to an individual animal. Just like slaughter stock producers, animal breeders also have to monitor the life histories of their animals with care, and regularly record important data as a means of ensuring successful breeding on a systematic basis. Here too, animal and meat traders' organizations at every level, processing plants and sales organizations are all interested in being able to trace the life history of each individual animal. In all cases, the prerequisite for reliable monitoring and this degree of traceability is a reliable means of marking the animals.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are numerous different methods of marking animals. An animal can be given an ear tag, for example, or an ear tattoo. These tattoos are applied with forceps, which means that the tattoo site has to be accessible from both sides. But e.g. pigs' ears are often extremely dirty, however, or parts of the ears may even be torn away if the pig is injured, so that tattoos are difficult or impossible to read. And at the slaughterhouse the animal heads, together with the ears, are separated from the body very early on, so that the meat-bearing carcass is no longer identifiable.
Tattoos per se are very reliable, however, because they are permanent and grow with the animal. Until now, the problem with tattooing has always been applying the tattoo. Various prior art tattooing instruments exist for applying tattoos to body sites that can only be accessed from one side. These instruments have one or more tattooing needles which execute a rapid up and down movement like a sewing machine needle, thereby penetrating the animal skin to a certain depth. Before, during or immediately after the needles are applied, the tattoo site is swabbed with an antiseptic tattooing liquid containing a suitable dye, which then flows into the holes and fixes itself permanently in the skin.
European Patent Application No. 0,006,395. discloses a process and a device for marking animals. In this process part of the device, namely the write head of the tattooing instrument, is applied to the surface of the animal's skin. A vacuum is then created between the skin and this write head, whereupon the skin is securely sucked against the write head of the tattooing instrument. Pre-selected marks are then punched into the skin using tattooing needles, and tattooing liquid is forced into the holes by the tattooing needles at the same time. On completion of the tattooing process, the vacuum is relieved by letting air in between the skin and the instrument, and the instrument is then removed from the surface of the skin, resp. the animal. Before this instrument can be used, however, the tattoo site has to be swabbed with tattooing liquid. Only then can the actual tattooing proceed with the instrument. There is no facility for supplying the tattooing liquid automatically, and the only information given is that tattooing liquid can be supplied in the known manner. Practice has shown, however, that a means of automatically supplying tattooing liquid as described e.g. in British patent 1'444'355, will not work with an instrument of this type.
This United Kingdom Patent Application No. 1,444,355 proposes a tattooing instrument like a hand-held compass saw, with the individual characters having actually to be written by moving the instrument on the animal's skin. The British patent further teaches that the housing element containing the needles can include a chamber into which pigments could be introduced. In practice, however, the liquid in the needle container dries up quickly when the instrument is not used, with the result that the fine needles and feeder lines unavoidably seize up.
No tattooing instrument has yet proved reliable, and none is used widely within the sector. They are either too time-consuming to use because too much preparation is required for each tattoo, or they do not function reliably in the long-term. Furthermore, the marks that can be tattooed are often insufficiently variable, or it takes too long to apply a tattoo if, despite the lack of variability, one still wants to tattoo a longer mark.
Hence it is the task of this invention to propose a process and a device for individually marking animals, designed to overcome the disadvantages already mentioned. The process must be reliable, i.e. from the moment it is applied, the mark must remain indelible and legible at all times on the animal so that even after it is slaughtered, the mark can still be reliably read on the decapitated or scalded carcass. The marking must also be tamper-proof and big enough to be easily legible. The process must also be able to be practised on the animal in such a way that the animal suffers neither stress nor any particular pain, and is certainly not injured. The process must also be fast and able to be used anywhere.
The device for carrying out the process must be efficient, so that as many animals as possible can be marked per unit of time. The device must be handy, and therefore mobile, and reliable and easy to operate for trouble-free use in dirty environments, and it must also function without faults in the long-term. The instrument must enable sufficiently individualized marks and a satisfactory variety of characters and, finally, it must be inexpensive enough to purchase and operate to make it financially viable for most large animal keepers.